August, 2020
Lincoln – I am writing this before any in my circle of family and friends are taken down by the coronavirus pandemic, so it can't be said it is written out of personal anguish or bitterness.
But it's hard to imagine becoming more disgusted with the situation under any future circumstances, even loss of loved ones.
What has the country come to? I see little willingness hold anyone accountable for the unfolding disaster, or for people to take individual responsibility for their role in it.
Nebraska newspapers, which I read daily, show remarkably little public reflection as to what got us into a situation that is destroying lives and livelihoods, or how we can get out of it as quickly as possible. Typically, the newspapers have several articles bemoaning the loss of football before noting the loss of mere people, usually nameless.
In the Nebraska press, broadcast and print, the concept of accountability is rarely approached. Elections have consequences. Accountability ultimately would involve a majority of Nebraskans looking in the mirror with appropriate soul-searching. Although Donald Trump, for whom a majority of Nebraskans voted, did not create the coronavirus, his inept handling of it has made it much worse than it had to be, by a reasonably calculated factor of about three. Other comparable western democracies have done demonstrably better to meet the challenge.
I want to ask a question now, not over a grave or holding the ashes of a loved one: whatever made you, my fellow Nebraskans, vote for a president who had no experience in government whatsoever, had no military service, was a serial bankrupt, a philanderer, an indecent television buffoon with an obvious tendency toward megalomania? Why would you risk your country and the fate of us all to such a person?
The other political party gave you a choice. She was not a criminal or murderer, as ridiculously alleged. If you did not like the choices presented, for valid reasons as you saw them, there was the option of not voting at the top of the ticket. No one can say how the Democratic candidate would have performed as president, but it cannot escape notice, in the summer of 2020, that the best responses to the pandemic worldwide have been those of women leaders. She could hardly have done worse in stemming the largest health and economic catastrophe of our lifetime.
Did you vote as you did because of how your neighbors were voting, because of what you saw on television or social media? I understand the impulse. I also understand that the likes of such a campaign have not been seen since that orchestrated by the incredibly effective public opinion manipulator Josef Goebbels.
Granted, much of today's media messaging, in service to the man who would break democracy to his will (and in service to their own bottom lines), sounds persuasive. It makes lies of truth, and truth of lies, at a level not seen in decades. Many people are susceptible to the inducements, to peer pressure, to group-think.
But what about individual responsibility, or the lack of it, that favorite fallback of so many to explain the misfortunes of the world?
I look in vain for reports of Nebraskans taking individual responsibility to accept a thoughtful measure of accountability for the wholly unnecessary extent of the pandemic. Newspaper editorials search for safe topics, to avoid having to offer an opinion concluding that you-reap-what-you-sow. I've seen no interviews of business people, justifiably distressed by the turn of events, asking how they voted. When nursing homes are quarantined in counties that voted overwhelmingly for Trump, no reporters ask the residents if they have any regrets about how they voted, although that should be an obvious question.
That assumes, of course, that such residents know America is doing poorly among peer countries. They may not know. As Goebbels boasted in 1940, “There are so many lies that truth and swindle can scarcely be distinguished. That is best for us at the moment.”
Personally, I also believe in individual responsibility, insofar as a person is capable of taking it.
So if Covid strikes me, or near me, I'm not likely to accept any condolences from those who bear a share of responsibility, but won't take it. If anyone should say "I'm sorry for your loss," I will ask, "Are you sorry for your vote?"
